


save that heart for me

by Madeofsequins



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen, M/M, Reunions, post-qoaad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 01:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madeofsequins/pseuds/Madeofsequins
Summary: After their separation, after their reunion, after the next end of the world has been averted: Kit and Ty wake up.





	save that heart for me

**Author's Note:**

> You may see, if you squint, allusions to some kind of plot. But please make no mistake, there is no actual plot contained here. It's just a dump of feelings.
> 
> (Title from Past Lives by BØRNS)

Kit wakes up to the solid weight of an arm thrown across his ribcage. The sliver of sky he can see past the askew curtain is a smudgy purple, which means the hour is still ungodly early. He gladly takes the opportunity to sink further into the bedsheets and edge closer to the lean body sleeping soundly beside him, careful not to dislodge the arm flung across his torso.

He spent years waking up alone in a spare, neat room in Devon, months after that hopping between Institute beds across the world, a few harrowing days in a bunker in another dimension, and, most recently, he spent nights in this very bed, not alone but with a careful distance maintained between his body and Ty’s. The road behind them has been very long and often rocky, and he welcomes the tentative new hope that the worst is finally behind them. They’d gotten back late last night after a wonderfully routine patrol, and Kit feels overwhelmingly grateful to be able to fall back asleep now, but before he does that, to nestle in closer to Ty, lips grazing his bare collarbone. He watches Ty’s long, dark eyelashes flutter momentarily before he closes his own and allows sleep to drag him back down.

***

_Kit spent his early teenage years trying not to think about his future and his late teen years trying not to think of the past. It works reasonably well for a few years; some days are better than others. Some days are full of tiny hands and home-cooked meals, a sense that a real future is possible for him, a sense of belonging. Other days are spent banging his fist against a wall or throwing a knife at the old oak tree in the yard, over and over and over, wondering if a few weeks of time are actually going to haunt him for the rest of his life._

_Not long after his eighteenth birthday, a letter arrives for him. Tessa brings it to his room, trying and failing to hide her surprise, but she leaves him to open it in privacy. He reads a note written in a familiar hand, tight and precise: "_ I am sorry for what I did, and the part I asked you to play in it. And I’m sorry to ask you for help again, but there is no one else." _Kit lets himself wonder for a moment, uncharitably, if Ty really is sorry and if so, what he thinks he’s apologizing for. He lets the moment pass, though, and after that, there’s no question. He never could say no to Ty._

***

Several hours later, Kit blinks awake to bright daylight in his eyes and the light pressure of Ty’s fingers on his wrist. Ty is standing in front of him, alert and polished, already fully dressed in black. He looks arresting, as he always does; unfortunately, Kit is currently too groggy to fully appreciate it. Ty’s eyes warm almost imperceptibly when his gaze sweeps over Kit’s face, a split-second of eye contact that Kit misses as soon as it’s over.

“Good morning,” Ty says, sounding just as awake as he looks. He looks amazing. He sounds amazing. Kit is so happy that this is his life now, and not only because he’s not waking up every day in mortal peril.

“Mmmph,” Kit replies, pressing his yawn into Ty’s hip, conveniently located at face level as long as he continues lying down, which he plans to keep doing for at least ten more minutes. He flips the hand that Ty had been holding to grab at Ty’s wrist, pulling him back into bed. Ty gives him a half-smile and, graceful as always, allows himself to be pulled down into the circle of Kit’s arms.

**

_Kit Portals to Los Angeles with a terrible weight of dread. He’s running through any number of terrible consequences that have caught up with Ty, each worse than the last. He’s also only human, a teenage boy with a still-healing heart, and he’s dreading how awkward it’s going to be when he and Ty see one other again for the first time in three years._

_As it turns out, his second fear was unfounded, but only because the first was so on the mark. There’s no time to be awkward when terror is about to rain down on everyone and everything that you love._

**

“Up, Kit,” Ty finally insists after it’s clear he thinks he’s indulged Kit enough for one morning. “There’re pancakes for breakfast, and then we really have to complete those forms--”

“Paperwork, seriously? A guy helps save the whole entire world, and the only reward is _paperwork_?”

Ty grins. “It might be among them, but paperwork is not the _only_ reward.”

Kit’s eyebrows shoot up into his hair. “Where the hell is my pen?”

**

_There is a moment, at the end, a brief sliver of time that drags into a terrible eternity, in which Kit sees Ty lost forever. A Portal, spiraling shut, too fast, too fast; Ty, a tall, slim silhouette on the other side, frozen in shock. His wide gray eyes lock with Kit’s, a hundred feet away, maybe; an entire world apart. Kit is choking on his panic, and all he can hear over the roar in his ears is screaming. He’s too far gone to know if the screams belong to him. He’ll find out much later than they did._

_The world goes white behind Kit’s eyes. He must fall to his knees, because when he can finally see again, he’s on the ground. His palms sting where his hands hit gravel, his head is pounding, and the bottom of his stomach has dropped out. The Portal is gone, and Ty--_

_Ty is here. He’s standing alone, perfectly still, staring at the place where the Portal had been. Magnus Bane, looking exhausted, is slumped against a nearby tree. He must have kept the Portal open just long enough for Ty to come back._

_Kit is so relieved he feels like he’s going to vomit. His organs start to settle back where they’re supposed to be in his body, and he suddenly can’t stand one more second being apart from Ty, can’t have one more second that Ty doesn’t_ know--

 _He gathers up his protesting limbs and forces his battered body upright, sprinting as fast as he can to Ty and wrapping around him in an embrace that’s all desperation, ungentle and consuming. He feels Ty’s quick, sharp intake of air even as he can’t smother his own gasping breath. "_ Ty." _His chest is so tight; his heart is hammering in his ears. Is this what it feels like to have a heart attack? "Ty, Ty, Ty."_

_Against him, toe to toe and chest to chest, Ty is silent. Kit’s mind races, starts to suggest that he run away and never come back before he destroys himself again, when Ty’s arms tighten around him, fingers clutching at Kit’s shoulder blades like a drowning man struggling for purchase. Kit can’t move and wouldn’t even if he could. Kit is never going anywhere else ever again._

***

They won’t be in Los Angeles much longer, and Kit is making a point to revisit all of his and Ty’s old haunts, or at least those that don’t elicit horrible memories, before they depart. The beach seems safe enough, and Ty looks pleased when Kit asks him if he’d walk down there with him after dinner.

They walk in companionable silence for a while. Ty’s headphones are looped around his neck, but he hasn’t made any movement to put them on while they’ve been out tonight. Kit’s thoughts are loud and messy; he wouldn’t mind a distraction, himself, but this -- talking, moving forward, healing -- this is important.

“Did you miss it here, while you were away?”

Ty, who had been watching the waves crash against his feet as they walked, looks up and over at him for a moment, considering. “Yes. It’s home. But I couldn’t be here, before. I wasn’t ready to be here without Livvy.” He pauses for so long that Kit thinks he’s stopped talking. “Or without you, I don’t think. Did you? Miss it?”

Kit’s face arranges itself into a small, self-deprecating smile, even though he wishes it wouldn’t. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” He raises his hand from his side to clasp Ty at the elbow before trailing his fingers down his forearm: a question.

Ty grabs at his fingers in answer and they continue, hand in hand. “Did you leave because of what I did? The necromancy?”

Kit sighs. They haven’t talked about this, not really. He wants to not talk about this and instead go back to sharing pancakes at breakfast and tumbling around together between the sheets. “No, it wasn’t that. I mean, I was scared, about what you -- we -- did and what would happen, and, well--” He gestures with his free hand to indicate ‘all the crazy that just went down.’ “I wasn’t wrong. But that wasn’t why.” He swallows. “Ty, from the beginning I knew how important you were. To me. My whole world fell apart, but you were there, and you were everything. And then you lost Livvy, and all I wanted to do was help you in any way that I could. Probably I shouldn’t have, with the spell and everything, but I couldn’t lose you. And then it didn’t work, and it felt like that was all that mattered to you. That nothing else did, that I didn’t -- I know that’s not fair. I didn’t know it then, though. So I left, and I lost you anyway.” He stops to inhale deeply. “I’m sorry, for all of it.”

“You do matter to me, Kit. You always did. You were the only one I could be around. No one else understood, but you always have.” His left hand is jingling something in his pocket, a set of keys or a fidget toy, but his right hand remains tightly clasped with Kit’s. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t want you to be scared, or to feel bad.” His mouth twists up. “Obviously I didn’t do the right things. All of it went wrong.”

Kit tugs Ty to a stop and rests his head on Ty’s knobby shoulder. “Neither of us were winning Shadowhunter of the Year back then.”

“There is no Shadowhunter of the Year award.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

He tilts his head up just a fraction to direct an affectionate smile in Ty’s direction, which Ty returns. Kit leans into him and closes the rest of the distance, capturing Ty’s mouth in a kiss that he hopes says the rest of the words he couldn’t get out tonight. Fierce and eager, Ty is kissing him back, and it feels like _I’m sorry_ and _You matter;_   _I love you then and now and forever_. Or maybe that’s what Kit is trying to say himself. Hopefully, they both are.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kit sees the opalescent form of a girl in a white dress, floating just above the waves as they break out away from the shore. She’s positioned herself exactly in Kit’s line of sight, and as she looks at him and Ty, her face breaks into a brilliant smile before she fades away into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm probably doing it wrong, but you can find me on [tumblr](http://korvidkids.tumblr.com).


End file.
